NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

TERM PAPER

NATURAL RESOURCE

STRATEGIES and its implication

SUBMITTED TO,

PROF. C. SHAMBU PRASAd

SUBMITTED BY:

GARIMA SUMAN (15)
MEGHA SINHA(25)
RASHMI REKHA(38)

NATURAL RESOURCE – STRATEGIES AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

ABSTRACT

Natural resources have been the source of conflict and human rights abuse in recent years.Its impact on the lives of people has been tremendous. As demand for water hits the limits of finite supply, potential conflicts are brewing between nations that share Tran boundary freshwater reserves. More than 50 countries on five continents might soon be caught up in water disputes unless they move quickly to establish agreements on how to share reservoirs, rivers, and underground water aquifers. This term paper aims to highlight the issues of water crisis, impact on the lives of people and various options to combat it.

It expresses the current status of water resources use and management in India and explores alternatives for resolving them. These alternatives highlights the importance of property rights in water, legal and institutional framework, pricing of water and removal of imperfections in water market, national database, water management information system and the technologies for improving water use efficiency. The strategies proposed for resolving these issues include the promulgation of new national water policy, backed by the enabling Act of Parliament.

The International Development Enterprises aims to improve equitably the social, economic and environmental conditions of families in need, with special emphasis on the rural poor, by identifying, developing and marketing affordable, appropriate and environmentally sustainable solutions through market forces. One such solution is the popularizing of manual pump among small and marginal farmers. This term paper discusses how the treadle pump transforms the small holder house holds through a variety of impacts mainly on farming systems, livelihood patterns, shift towards vegetable cultivation, increase in inputs like fertilizers, seeds, pesticides and access to food supply and nutrition.

The impact of resource crisis on people is quite evident from the illustration of how forest degradation affects the livelihood of forest-dependent communities. It modified the gender relations among Juang and Sarao tribal Communities. Introduction of ploughing cultivation, market intrusion along with state policies, privatization and commoditization of swidden lands and male migration were the root causes that influenced the gender relations.

ISSUES THAT GENERATES THE NEED OF WATER POLICIES

Water is a prime natural resource, a basic human need and a precious national asset. Planning and development of natural resources need to be governed by national perspective. One of the main issues that has generated the need for Water Policies and Water Management is the declining per capita freshwater availability. It is estimated, India accounts for about 4% of the world’s fresh water resources. At the backdrop of India’s share of 2.5 % in the total land this seems to be adequate but we should not forget that India accounts for 16% of the world population and 15% of the world’s animal population. Thus the per capita renewable freshwater availability in the country was estimated to be 1086 cubic meters per annum in the year 2000 and has been declining ever since. Besides, spatial and year to year fluctuation in the rainfall causes variation at the regional level. Water is unevenly distributed. Most of the rainfall is concentrated in 100 to 120 days during the June through September. More important, 60% of the India’s Fresh Water Resource is concentrated in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin which accounts 33% of the country’s total area.

To add to it, Floods and Droughts result in enormous economic loss to the nation and the suffering to the millions of affected people. According to National Commission on Integrated Water Resources Development Total water resources provide 1,952.87 BCM and of it only 690.32 is the utilizable surface water. Irrigation accounts for 84% of the total water resources, domestic purposes for 4%, industries and energy 6% and the remaining 6% for other uses. Growing competitions for the use of available water has led to conflicts with the neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal and even inter state disputes as between Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Kerela and Karnataka and even intra state disputes between agricultural uses and industrial uses.

This generates an urgent need of improved National Policy for Managing India’s Water Security for Present and Future. Water Security means to ensure every person access to reasonably adequate quantity of water of good quality on a sustainable basis.

EXISTING SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT OF WATER RESOURCES

State Governments have constitutional power to frame rules and regulations for managing water resources. Besides, the Union Ministry of Water Resources lays down policies and programmes for development and regulation of country’s water resource. According to the entry 56 of the Union List the Government of India can take over the regulation and control of any of the inter-state rivers and river valleys. At the state level Ministry of Water Resources Development is responsible for water management. Besides various NGO’s work in this field. The main concern is the lack of unified agency responsible for overall management of the resources. There is inefficient coordination among the agencies that causes duplication of work and hence wastage of money. Another important concern in the implementation of the policies. Consider for example “The National Water Policy (NWP)” adopted in 1987. It recommends integrated and multidisciplinary approach but due to inappropriate legal backup and organizational framework, NWP is merely a paper document.

PROPOSED STRATEGIES

A Shared vision and a Realistic Goal: Over the past five years, the science program of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has generated new research thinking on water management and its relationship to poverty and food security in developing countries. It assesses of the world water situation. It is also a call to action, which aims to mobilize governments and other actors in society, to ensure the sustainable management of water resources for the benefit of all people. Water Management Vision (WMV) 2025 states that in the year 2025, every person living in India will be aware of the critical role of water in human and national Development and to the need for its conservation and judicious management at the house hold. It also calls for the complete participation of people and for practical action plan to bridge the demand-supply gap. One of the challenges is the availability of the requisite management expertise ay all levels of hierarchy of the irrigation administration in India. There should also be strategies to ensure equitable distribution of benefits and sharing of cost of water development projects among the users.

Property Rights in Water:The key issue with a property rights framework is that it is not the property which is owned, it is the rights to use the property which are owned. The nature of the rights affects the behaviors of people managing and using a resource. Importantly because property rights distinguish the rights of an individual from the rest of society, they have scarcity and therefore value. Property rights are an integral element in the management and use of resources. The author “Katar Singh” is in favour of water being a Common resource Pool.The public ownership of surface water is implied in government appropriation and regulation of surface water through irrigation projects and also in the Northern India Canal And Drainage Act of 1873 where by the farmers owning land have the first benefit of the water stream or the pond. In India the ownership of the ground water rests with the ownership of the overlying land. The author suggests that a National Water Development and Management Board should be created by the act of parliament. And the ownership rights should be necessarily vested in the Panchayati Raj Institutions. The water users should be organized in the form of cooperatives or a company at the level of village or town. Every water user will buy share of the company have jurisdiction over the village or town of residence of the user. Theses shares should be transferable and saleable.

Legal And Institutional Framework: Appropriate legal framework is required that clearly specifies the rights and responsibilities of various stakeholders in water. As water in included in the State List (List II) of the constitution of India, State Governments are empowered to legislate on water related issues. Presently restrictions on the flow of institutional credit from banks are regulated by the guidelines issued by the National Bank for Agriculture and rural Development (NABARD). These restrictions are in the form of minimum spacing requirements between tube-wells financed by banks. This has drawbacks because the rich farmers resort to borrowing from non-institutional sources and thereby bypass these restrictions.

Pricing of water and removal of Imperfections in water markets: Improving water resource management requires recognizing how the overall water sector is linked to the national economy. Equally important is to understand how alternative economic policy instruments influence water use across different economic sectors as well as between local, regional and national levels and among households, farms and firms. For too long, many water managers have failed to recognize the connection between macroeconomic policies and their impact on, for example, technical areas such as irrigation Marker prices gives signals to producers and consumers as to what and how much should be consumed and thereby facilitates the allocation of resources and distribution of various goods and services to those willing and able to pay the most of them. But in India, water market exists in many agricultural advance areas such as Punjab, Haryana and many parts of Uttar Pradeshand Bihar. These are informal, unregulated and have several imperfections. It is quite possible that the market price do not reflect the real resource cost of water and its real demand. Besides lots of government interventions in the form of subsidies, quotas etc. that limits the scope of the interpretation of the real use value of water. It is necessary to do away with these the distortions in the water market. Proper pricing of water in India would remove subsidies that are a political issue but failure to do it will encourage its wastage. A survey of 100 farmers conducted in two purposively selected villages in the Kheda district of Gujarat, it was found that the sample farmers were willing to pay 150 to 300 percent of the prevailing tariff or timely and adequate supply of irrigation water.

Setting up a National Database and Water Management Information System (WMIS): Computerized database and implementation of WMIS is required for the successful planning and management of water. The Water Management Information System (WMIS) is an Information Technology Tool based on a relational and distributed Database. Its objective is to provide relevant information for water management in the JordanValley. Even people must have rights to access the information about how much water is invested on water management and about the details of the allocation of money among the resources. This will bring in more transparency and accountability. The Hydrology project being implemented in eight Indian States and supported by the World Bank is a major step towards strengthening institutional capabilities for collection, compilation and retrieval of hydrological data. Under this the system of retrieval of the database is being improved through computerization.

Using New Technologies: To ensure safe and healthy lifestyle new technologies must be carefully evaluated before they are recommended for wider use. For example use of some of the new technologies such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides later proved to be harmful. There is also a need of public investment in developing water saving and water treatment technologies. Consider for example, Treadle pump emerges out to be one of the best irrigation facilities for small and marginal farmers. It proved to be a very good and cost effective alternative to the canal irrigation methods that requires huge investment and maintenance in the villages of coastal Orrisa, namely, Salajanga and Sunugoradi.

The working paper 148, conducted in the coastal Orissa, for assessing the socio-economic impact if Treadle pump irrigation in South Asia. Treadle pump is a foot-operated water lifting device that can operate small plots of land of small holders in regions that have high water table( not deeper than 25 feet).It is fit for poor, small and marginal farmers. In short it is a powerful machine for poverty alleviation. The working paper demonstrateshow treadle pump adoption brought about sweeping changes in the household dynamics of the adopter families, by focusing on their livelihood patterns, farming enterprises, livelihood patterns and access to food supplies and nutrition. It also shows how treadle pump adoption has brought about changes in the socio-economic conditions of the farmers in the coastal villages of Orissa. It shows the easy working of treadle pump in comparison to other means of irrigation and its suitability for operation on small and marginal farms.

HISTORY OF TREADLE PUMP:

It was originally developed in Bangladesh. It was originally designed and developed by aNon-governmental organization named RDRS (Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service) in Bangladesh in the early 1980’s. The treadle pump is today popularly known as Krishi Bandhu Pump.

Functioning of Treadle pump

The treadle pump is a low-speed foot-operated, reciprocating pump. The device can be operated by standing on two –bamboo levers and depressing them alternatively using the feet. On an average, it is able to produce a discharge of 1-2 litres per second. All bamboo pumps developed and installed are of 8.75 cm cylinder diameter with a maximum output of 1.5 litres per second of water lifted from a depth of 5.45-5.75 metres. It uses a bamboo or a flexible pipe or a suction tube-well to pump water from shallow aquifers or surface water –bodies.

Orissa is one of the poorest states in India, 55% of the people living below the poverty line. Here the farmers are always to losses due to extreme variations. There was a need for increased production of agricultural commodities to meet the future requirements. The introduction to modern exploration techniques brought to light the groundwater potential in many parts of the state. The International Development Enterprise works in twelve countries across the world to improve the conditions of the poor by mass marketing low cost technologies. It started its operation in India with the promotion of Treadle pump in 1994. In Orissa, the price of pump is Rs.1540 per unit, but comes with 50% subsidy from the Government.

Socio-economic Dynamics in two villages –Salajanga, Sunugoradi

Salajanga: Village economy largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Farmers grow paddy in rainy season (which gave less yield). The Treadle-pump owing farmer grow a variety of vegetable crops mostly in two seasons. During the past one year, a gross area of 18.19 acre has been irrigated using Treadle pump.

Sunugoradi: Those who have bore wells or Tenda systems take irrigated crops.

Profile of treadle pump adopters:

Average family size of Treadle pump adopters is higher than that of all their counterparts except diesel pump owners. Treadle pump adopters have a higher percentage of literate persons in their families as compared to their counterparts. It is also correct to say that most of the treadle pump adopters in Salajanga are the earliest adopters in the State, and have been persuaded by the officials of International Development Enterprises to adopt the technology.

Impact of Treadle pump on the household and farming enterprises:

There are many factors which make Treadle pump surpass over other water lifting technologies like: Affordability, easy availability, economic viability, easiness in operation, and operational versatility.

Similarly on the farming enterprises, the Treadle pump ensured access to groundwater throughout the year, thus increasing the reliability on irrigation. The gross irrigated area is much higher for individual treadle pump owners’ farms (0.79 acres), as compared to their rain-fed counterparts (0.12 acres). The intensity of irrigation is also much higher for treadle pump owner’s farms (30.6%) as compared to the rain-fed farmers (10.05%)

Increased access to water supplies has resulted in an increase in number of seasons cropped. It is because of increase in cropped area in each season.

The type of input used in farming shifts from rain-fed agriculture to irrigated agriculture.

Earlier farmers required low level of inputs for growing rain-fed paddy and pulses. But now they require inputs in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, fuels and seeds.

Avg expenditure incurred by the household / TP owners / DP owners / Tenda Owners / Rain-fed Farmers / Water Buyers / Landless doing sharecropping
Fertilizers / 295.7 / 336.9 / 222.3 / 171.5 / 287.9 / 70.2
Farmyard
manures / 2.4 / 3.9 / 13.6 / 20.2 / 1.0 / 1.4
Diesel / 27.0 / 65.4 / 5.1 / 10.9 / 33.1 / 0.0
Seeds / 122.9 / 50.3 / 113.9 / 22.8 / 78.1 / 15.1

Treadle pump impact on Input use in agriculture